


sunset from your window

by orphan_account



Category: Eastern Promises (2007)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-16
Updated: 2008-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-21 21:09:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her name is Anna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sunset from your window

Her name is Anna and she slightly tilts her head when he walks toward her in the crosswalk; her lungs expand and her fingers, deep within her pockets, search desperately for something concrete to grasp. It is Sunday morning, he is growing closer, and she is beginning to quietly panic.

He means too many things and then, without her realizing, he’s directly in front of her.

“Excuse me,” he says in thickly accented English. The eye contact is brief (only enough time for one exhale, one flake of snow to melt on the earth above Tatiana’s father, one shot to ring through the London winter), but still makes her shake a little. He gives her something that might have once been a smile.

The city is very cold this time of year so she keeps her eyes low and calls it coincidence.

 

 

 

Honestly: she rarely thinks about him.

 

 

 

RUSSIAN ORGANIZED CRIME hangs before Anna’s eyes on the front page of the Times. The sound of the paper slicing the air with the force that has been gradually building up inside seems to echo throughout the house.

Helen, bless the woman, looks at her daughter and like the good mother she is, says nothing at the newspaper on the floor.

 

 

 

She dreams of sitting on a bench somewhere in Moscow. Never has she been there, but the last time she saw him he had looked at her in a way that made her think, _this is what his city must look like._

The clouds in the sky begin to leak rain and then she finds an umbrella over her head.

“You walk with me?” he asks. “Do not sit in rain.”

She stands up and reaches to touch his arm, but thinks better of it. Her hand drops and he laughs.

She wakes up.

 

 

 

She dates a man named Charles. Middle class, English and nervous around needles. Charles has enough within two months. He cites several things, most notable being the way she sleeps at night and _oh... that awful bike.  
_

 

 

She cannot lie: sometimes out of the corner of her peripheral vision, she sees the black car. But there is logic that even she cannot deny: goodbye is goodbye is goodbye. Him walking away means he is not coming back. Anna Khitrova standing with a baby in her arms in the dark is like knowing that things will finally be better. _The world is so much easier to deal with_ , she thinks, _in black and white.  
_


End file.
